Forget the enthusiasm gap — that word is too mild. There is a passion gap in this race that is palpable. You don’t find many people shivering with excitement to vote for Reid. But the feverish animation of voters hot to oust Reid is unlike anything I have experienced in nearly 25 years of covering politics. And it seems to have been building since January, evidenced by Reid’s inability to move his highly elevated disapproval rating.

Interviewer: You said something a moment ago that I have to follow up on and I have to draw you out on. You said you don’t have to lie anymore now that you’re not a politician. What did you lie about when you were governor?

Jerry Brown: It’s all a lie. You’re pretending there’s a plan…

Interviewer: What did you lie about?

Jerry Brown: You run for office and the assumption is “Oh, I know what to do”. You don’t. I didn’t have a plan for California. Clinton doesn’t have a plan. Bush doesn’t have a plan.

Interviewer: You said you had a plan for California and you lied because you didn’t have a plan?

Jerry Brown: You say you’re going to lower taxes, you’re going to put people to work, you’re gonna improve the schools, you’re going to stop crime… crime is up, schools are worse, taxes are higher. I mean be real!

For a liar, that was an awfully honest statement. I guess.

Folks in California: vote for Meg Whitman. Do you really want your state to commit suicide? Because that's what a vote for Jerry Brown represents.

Can we call this burgeoning scandal Boxer-gate yet? After all, when a Democrat finds a way to secretively transfer $8 million in cold cash to her son using unabashed power in the Senate -- which is what The Hillalleges that Barbara Boxer did -- then it seems an apt title indeed.

Step 1: Find a defunct American Indian tribe that officially ceased to exist decades ago.

Step 2: Jam legislation through that reinstates the tribe and discretely tack on an amendment that gives the tribe the right to open a casino near San Francisco.

Step 3: Have the tribe turn over all real estate and policy details for the construction of the casino to two advisory firms, both of which were co-owned by the Senator's son.

To avoid immediate citizen concern about a casino popping up in their posh neighborhood, Doug Boxer’s Kenwood Investments 2 kindly fronted for the casino interests in purchasing a tract of land in Rohnert Park, as well as helpfully taking options on adjoining parcels of land for themselves to sweeten the pot... Then Platinum Advisers sprang into action to try to gain community support for the casino...

What makes the story timely is that the federal government just a couple of weeks ago was compelled to declare the land that Boxer’s son had purchased on behalf of the Indian casino a reservation, effectively killing the local zoning and lawsuits that had tied the project up in knots for most of the past decade.

As an aside, The Hill's Rick Manning -- who first reported this in the national press -- must be in very deep doo-doo indeed.

This is the story as it appeared yesterday morning.

And this is the story as it appears now.

Scrubbed as clean as a whistle, perhaps because The Hill was threatened with every form of reprisal possible. And as a Beltway news periodical, the opportunities for malfeasance by political hacks are almost limitless.

Death threats and Hitler regalia are signs of sarcasm, not hatred. So this sort of thing is A-okay.

It's sarcasm, rubes.

Update: Dan from New York calls yesterday's hate sarcasm fest the Rally to Restore Sharia:

Did you notice who Stewart and Colbert chose for their show's grand finale? Yusuf Islam, the Artist Previously Known as Cat Stevens. Quite a few good commentators noticed too, starting with Ed Driscoll who has video and links to the others. In case you forgot, the American convert to Islam endorsed the Ayatollah's fatwah against Salman Rushdie and has been barred from Israel for "transferring donations and funds to Islamic elements which are hostile to Israel," according to Israeli authorities.All in good fun though - unless you're one of those dumb rightwing racists who can't take a joke.

Update II: The brave, still anonymous commenter offers another clarification.

Since it was my comment that spawned your latest screed ... I'll play a little longer... I posted my comment as "Anonymous" because a few years back, I wrote an OP-ED regarding the Bush administration's unnecessary war in Iraq.

It received lots of angry right wing comment. But, it also led to a right wing nut calling my home and threatening me and my family.

I can tell you are too dense to get it, but many of the people at the rally the other day were MOCKING you ... mocking folks who think that Communism, Fascism, and Socialism are all the same thing.

They were mocking people who babble incoherently that Mao, Stalin, and Hitler were the same as Obama... They were mocking people who bring guns to political rallies to suggest that if they don;t get the political outcomes they want, they may react with "2nd amendment remedies"... They were mocking those who would think that a large man stomping on the head of a small women was justified [Ed: you can see stop-action photos of what really occurred here]

In the end, they were mocking YOU, and you aren't bright enough to recognize it.

I'll say it slowly; do try to follow along. Hitler himself wrote that Nazism was an effort to improve Marxism. Put simply, the philosophies of Marxism, Socialism, Communism and Fascism share many qualities, most importantly their assignation of unlimited power of the state over the individual, ending finally in totalitarianism.

Modern conservatism aligns itself with limiting power granted to the state, which is the framework established by the Constitution. It is the only known antidote to the decline of corrupted governments into tyrannies.

But don't believe me--Hitler himself wrote of Nazism:

"I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit. The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and penpushers have timidly begun...I had only to develop logically what Social Democracy repeatedly failed in because of its attempt to realize its evolution within the framework of democracy. National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with the democratic order." -- Hitler to Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, pg. 186

.The Nazi Party, is of course, The National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei abbreviated NSDAP). Now, your course of reading for today is Whom Despots Fear, helpfully illustrated for imbecilic tools who require remedial, comic-book-level education on history, philosophy, law and economics.

...Now, note the irony captured below in KTVA's local coverage of yesterday's so called Restoring Sanity rally. Above they are exposed for conspiring to generate yet another negative headline grabbing story in an effort to damage Miller's Senate campaign. Now, in their rally coverage, they quote an activist criticizing both Sarah Palin and Joe Miller for allegedly generating so much of that very kind of news...

...In essence, CBS' KTVA is exposed above for generating negative coverage, and now we see them doubling back to highlight an activist's negative reaction to such news - in this case, presumably to also damage Miller's campaign. At this point, CBS affiliate KTVA appears to be engaged in political activism, not journalism...

FEMALE REPORTER: That’s up to you because you’re the expert, but that’s what I would do…I’d wait until you see who showed up because that indicates we already know something… [Laughter][INAUDIBLE]FEMALE REPORTER: Child molesters…MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaignworkers, which one’s the molester?[INAUDIBLE]FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender. [Laughter]MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…[INAUDIBLE]FEMALE REPORTER: And the one thing we can do is ….we won’t know….we won’t know butif there is any sort of chaos whatsoever we can put out a twitter/facebook alert: saying what the… ‘Hey Joe Miller punched at rally.’FEMALE REPORTER: Kinda like Rand Paul…I like that. [Laughter]FEMALE REPORTER: That’s a good one.

There was a time when the media would have been embarrassed about this sort of thing.

Of course, that roughly corresponds to the era when the media wasn't a laughingstock.

Andrew Morse, executive producer at ABC News Digital, issued the following statement after the leftist outcry.

Since conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart announced on his website that he was going to be a participant in ABC’s Town Hall meeting at Arizona State University, there has been considerable consternation and misinformation regarding my decision to ask him to participate in an election night Town Hall event for ABC News Digital. I want to explain what Mr. Breitbart's role has always been as one of our guests at our digital town hall event:

Mr. Breitbart is not an ABC News analyst.

He is not an ABC News consultant.

He is not, in any way, affiliated with ABC News.

He is not being paid by ABC News.

He has not been asked to analyze the results of the election for ABC News.

Mr. Breitbart will not be a part of the ABC News broadcast coverage, anchored by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. For the broadcast coverage, David Muir and Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg will contribute reaction and response gathered from the students and faculty of Arizona State University at an ABC News/Facebook town hall.

He has been invited as one of several guests, from a variety of different political persuasions, to engage with a live, studio audience that will be closely following the election results and participating in an online-only discussion and debate to be moderated by David Muir and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg on ABCNews.com and Facebook. We will have other guests, as well as a live studio audience and a large audience on ABCNews.com and Facebook, who can question the guests and the audience’s opinions.

In the bazaar of ideas, the modern Democrat is the suicide bomber. For, rather than entertain lively debate and diversity of opinion, he would rather destroy the world.

Today word broke that President Obama will head back to Delaware in yet another attempt to shore up support for "The Bearded Marxist". The visit Monday will mark the tenth trip for either Obama or Veep Joe "Plugs" Biden in recent months.

What's prompting the last-minute panic?

Gawker's hit piece apparently had the opposite effect of what its instigators had hoped. It generated sympathy for the GOP candidate as the most outrageous of a long series of ridiculous attacks.

The DNC is picking up the trend that people registered as Democrats are indeed early voting — NATIONALLY — but they are not voting Democrat. They are voting Republican, the way that I did here in Chicago today... if I had to guess they are using focus groups and then extrapolating those nationally to see a trend that horrifies them. They see people in Democrat strongholds like Chicago saying “F-U” to the party and voting Republican. Maybe they are doing exit polling at early vote centers and finding they are being screamed at by lifelong Democrats.

...My friend the fundraiser says they’ve worked out some kind of plug-and-chug mathematical box with what they are seeing in early voting states…when the current Delaware polling and focus group work is considered IN LIGHT OF THIS DOCUMENTED TREND, the DNC is horrified to see that Delaware is trending like the rest of the country…where registered Democrats who are going to vote intend to vote AGAINST the party…straight ticket, top to bottom, AGAINST Democrats.

Delaware might not be early voting... but from whatever the Democrats are seeing internally, if Delaware WAS early voting then Delaware’s numbers would be lining up with every other state.

That means Democrats aren’t safe ANYWHERE and there is nothing anyone can do to change that.

The most curious of [Obama's last] stops is in Connecticut, where the Democratic Senate candidate, Richard Blumenthal, has a comfortable lead over Republican Linda McMahon. Even though the seat appears to be in hand, White House officials view keeping Connecticut as critical to holding on to the Senate.

With 5-days remaining before election-day, the race for governor of California has tightened to a dead heat between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown. Two separate polls confirm that the race is too close to call. In a survey conducted by Hill Research Consultants among 604 likely voters on October 26th and 27th, the race for governor is tied 43% Whitman to 43% Brown with 4% voting for another candidate and 10% being undecided or refused to respond...

...In a separate McLaughlin & Associates survey conducted among 900 likely voters on October 25th, 26th and 27th (300 each night), Meg Whitman has a slight lead over Jerry Brown 44% to 43% with 6% voting for another candidate and 7% remaining undecided or refused to respond. This neck and neck race represents a marked improvement for Meg Whitman who trailed Jerry Brown from October 17th to 25th in Hill Research Consultant polling, by as much as 7 percentage points at one point.

Early Voting: In McLaughlin & Associates survey of 900 likely voters, the early voting is helping Meg Whitman. As of last night, 25% of the voters say that they have already voted by absentee mail in and among these voters Meg Whitman leads 43% to 40%. There are another 27% who tell us they will vote by early absentee mail between now and Saturday and Meg Whitman wins among those voters 48% to 43%. Among the 43% who tell us that they will vote in person on election day, it’s a virtual tie with Meg Whitman 43% and Jerry Brown 45%.

Californians: do you want the same crackpot who got you into this mess as Governor twice before? Or do you want someone who actually knows how businesses work and what they need to thrive and grow?

The choice is clear, California: save your state. Vote for Meg Whitman and reject the twice-failed Brown who has already proven himself a miserable failure and an economic train-wreck.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should celebrate his birthday this week by freeing two imprisoned American hikers, the State Department said on Twitter Thursday.

"What a gift that would be," tweeted State Department spokesman Philip Crowley after wishing Ahmadinejad a happy birthday... "Your 54th year was full of lost opportunities... Hope in your 55th year you will open Iran to a different relationship with the world."

Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, who were arrested while hiking along the Iraqi-Iranian border in July 2009, are imprisoned in Tehran.

This is so freaking pathetic my eyes are tearing up.

What has this country become under Barack Obama? Sending birthday wishes to dictators in the hope they'll release their hostages?

Suspicious packages discovered in Dubai and England in air cargo shipments to the U.S. contained explosive materials and appeared headed for Jewish places of worship in Chicago...

...The Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is suspected, and U.S. officials told the Associated Press that the chemical used, PETN, was also used in the failed Christmas Day airline bombing that was tied to the same group.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the front group CAIR, blamed militant Quakers and warned against profiling innocent Muslims who may or may not have been affiliated with Hamas, Hezbollah or other humanitarian aid groups.

You can't escape it. And consider -- you're putting your ballot in a cardboard box with an Obama logo on it -- what could go wrong?

Just wondering: when did it become acceptable among Democrats to openly collaborate with Communists, whose stated goal is the destruction of the American economy?

Or, put another way, when did it become acceptable for Democrats to intentionally destroy the economy in order to "transform" (their word, not mine) America.

Socialism, Communism and any other branch of Marxism is completely incompatible with the United States Constitution. And any Democrats who sympathize with these philosophies have automatically disqualified themselves from holding office. Because they simply can't honestly take an oath to uphold that which they despise.

Democrats are intensifying efforts to relax Senate rules that require a 60-vote “supermajority” to pass legislation as the party plans for a loss of seats in next week’s midterm elections... A number of senators and their staff are considering different ways to end or at least modify the filibuster...

For more than 100 years, senators have held up legislation... Some are calling for Joe Biden, the vice-president, to invoke his power as president of the Senate to call a vote on a rule change at the start of the new Congress in January.

Such a vote – which would need only 51 of the 100 senators to support it – could swap the 60-vote supermajority needed to end a filibuster for a simple majority or a compromise option.

“There will be a vote one way or another,” said Tom Udall, a Democratic senator from New Mexico. “Every day I think we gain momentum.”

Known as the “nuclear option” – or the “constitutional option” to its advocates – such a vote would be an incendiary move from the Obama administration and would be fiercely opposed by most Republicans and, potentially, some Democrats.

On The Daily Show Wednesday night, President Obama also expressed his desire to kill the filibuster, stating that it was "going to have to be fixed".

Fixed. Which means killed. Kind of like the American health care system.

The end always justifies the means with the modern National Social Democrat Party. Which is why you must rally your family, friends, neighbors and colleagues to the polls on Tuesday.

A Democrat insider reports that the party muckety-mucks are "terrified of her winning." Her being the extremist witch who also happens to be an articulate, attractive, Constitutional conservative who scares the squirtage out of certain bearded Marxists.

Yesterday, a poll went around showing Christine O’Donnell just five points behind Commie Coons in Delaware’s Senate race. This SORT OF explains the weird amount of time the White House has been spending in a slam dunk blue state.

But, Democrats are ferociously attacking CoD as hard as they attacked Scott Brown in Massachusetts. If she is so far behind, what is the point in beating up on this woman?

This is anecdotal, but I think I know why they are doing this... there are internals showing O’Donnell ahead.

Today I talked to a friend from Team Hillary who is a big Dem fundraiser. He told me that for the last week or so the DNC has been at DEFCON 1 leaning HARD on the rainmakers because they are terrified of a CoD win in Delaware.

The problem is some internal poll that apparently shows that a high percentage of Democrats early voting are voting straight ticket Republican instead…they are Democrats voting against Democrats.

I am still [a] registered Democrat here in Chicago and I voted straight ticket Republican except for Tom Dart for Sheriff because I know and like him. Other than that, it was all Republican. But, in terms of early voting stats, I was a Democrat early vote on paper.

The media is not factoring people like me into the equation... So someone at the DNC came up with a formula that takes all of this into account…and when THAT formula is applied to the Delaware race, CoD is ahead.

And that terrified the DNC enough to send the SOS to the big money guys like my friend for a Hail Mary pass.